Abraham Eraly - The Age of Wrath - A History of the Delhi Sultanate

Jalal-ud-din then assumed the office of Naib, and ruled the kingdom in the name of Kaiqubad. This charade went on for three months. Then one day Jalal-ud-din sent one of his officers and had Kaiqubad murdered. ‘This man … found the sultan lying at his last gasp in the room of mirrors,’ records Barani. ‘He despatched him with two or three kicks, and threw his body into Yamuna.’

It was a sordid end to a sordid life. Nothing is known about what happened to the infant sultan. Jalal-ud-din then formally ascended the throne. And with that began a new epoch in the history of the Delhi Sultanate.

Jalal-ud-din Khalji ascended the throne in mid-June 1290. His coronation was held in Kilughari, a suburb of Delhi, not in the city, for he thought it would be imprudent for him to enter the city then, as the dominant Turkish population of Delhi was hostile to him, considering him to be an Afghan usurper, not a Turk. The people of Delhi, observes Barani, ‘hated Khalji maliks … [They] had been for eighty years governed by sovereigns of Turkish extraction and were averse to the succession of Khaljis … They said that no Khalji had ever been a king, and that the race had no right or title to [the throne of] Delhi.’ Though Islam does not discriminate against people on the basis of their race, Muslim communities often did show such prejudices.

The prejudice of Turks was however misplaced in this case, for Khaljis were actually ethnic Turks. But they had settled in Afghanistan long before the Turkish rule was established there, and had over the centuries adopted Afghan customs and practices, intermarried with the local people, and were therefore looked down on as non-Turks by pure-bred Turks.

This snobbish aversion of the old Turkish nobility in Delhi for Khaljis did not however last long. Presently, as was to be expected, the nobles generally acquiesced to Jalal-ud-din’s accession and flocked to him, their material interests overriding their tribal prejudice. Besides, as Barani comments, ‘the excellence of Jalal-ud-din’s character, his justice, generosity, and devotion, gradually removed the aversion of the people.’

Jalal-ud-din nevertheless decided not to take up his residence in Delhi, presumably to avoid rousing the antagonism of the people there, and also because he felt that it would be presumptuous for him to sit on the throne of Balban, his former lord. So he completed the palace complex and gardens left unfinished by Kaiqubad at Kilughari, and took up his residence there. The princes and the nobles too then built their bungalows there, and soon several bazaars also came up there. ‘In three or four years houses sprang up on every side, and the markets became fully supplied,’ reports Barani. The suburb then came to be known as Shahr-i-Nau, the New City.

Jalal-ud-din was in his seventies when he ascended the throne. His old age and long subservient service under the Delhi sultans made him rather unassertive as a monarch, and this was disappointing to his pugnacious clansmen and relatives, who wanted to flaunt their newly acquired power and status, and advance the interests of their clan. Typically, when Jalal-ud-din first entered Delhi as sultan and went to the Red Palace of Balban, he, instead of riding into the courtyard of the palace, as sultans did, respectfully dismounted at the gate. And on entering the palace he wept bitterly, thinking of the inconstancy of temporal fortunes, and remembering how he had on so many occasions stood before the great sultan in humility and awe, but how now a dreadful misfortune had fallen on the sultan’s family.

JALAL-UD-DIN’S ACCESSION TO the throne, instead of inflating his ego, instilled in him great humility. Though he, as the warden of the western marches, was reputed for his fierce martial spirit, now, as sultan in his old age, he turned out to be, in the eyes of his clansmen, disgustingly mild, more concerned with his afterlife than with his temporal life. Although Jalal-ud-din on his accession did favour his sons and several of his relatives and clansmen with appointments to important positions in the kingdom, that only fuelled their personal ambitions for even higher positions, and made them still more disgruntled with the sultan.

Jalal-ud-din’s ostentatious displays of humility were particularly embarrassing to Khalji nobles. He would not punish even those who sought to overthrow him. Thus when Malik Chhajju, a nephew of Balban and the governor of Kara in Uttar Pradesh, rebelled and advanced on Delhi with an army to claim the throne as his inheritance, but was defeated and brought in chains before the sultan, Jalal-ud-din was moved to tears on seeing the prince in bonds, and he not only released him but also entertained him with wine in his private chambers, even spoke appreciatively of the rebel’s loyalty to his uncle. And when one of the sultan’s nobles upbraided him saying that his conduct was ‘unseemly and injudicious,’ he said that he would rather relinquish the throne than ruin his afterlife by shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.

Similarly, when it was reported to Jalal-ud-din that a group of Turkish nobles in their cups were prattling about overthrowing and killing him — one of the nobles, notes Barani, ‘said that he would finish off the sultan with a hunting knife, and another drew his sword and said he would make mince-meat of him’—his initial response was to dismiss the report, saying, ‘Men often drink too much and say foolish things; do not report drunken stories to me.’ But when these reports persisted, he one day summoned the tipplers to the court, flung down his sword before them and challenged, ‘Is there one among you who is man enough to take this sword and fight it out fairly with me?’ The abashed nobles then pleaded that their ‘drunken ravings’ should not be taken seriously. And the sultan, his eyes ‘filled with tears at these words,’ merely banished them from the court for a year. According to Barani, ‘Jalal-ud-din always treated his nobles, officers, and subjects with the greatest kindness and tenderness. He never visited their offences with blows, confinement, or other severity, but treated them as a parent treats his children.’

This leniency of the sultan extended even to thieves, whom he often released after taking from them an oath that they would never again steal. Similarly, when a large number of Thugs, a murderous robber band, were captured near Delhi, the sultan’s punishment for them was merely to transport them to Bengal and release them there!

ALL THIS DISGUSTED the Khalji nobles, and they, according to Barani, ‘whispered to each other that the sultan did not know how to rule, for instead of slaying the rebels he had made them his companions … He had none of the awesomeness and majesty of kings, … [nor the qualities of] princely expenditure and boundless liberality, [nor] the … severity, by which enemies are repulsed and rebels put down.’ In fact, one of his top nobles, Malik Ahmad Chap, the deputy lord chamberlain — whom Barani describes as ‘one of the wisest men of the day’—one day boldly told Jalal-ud-din all this to his face, and warned him that his indulgent conduct would kindle rebellions, for ‘punishments awarded by kings are warnings to men.’ The sultan listened patiently to the harangue, but in the end he said, ‘If I cannot reign without shedding the blood of Muslims, I would renounce the throne, for I cannot endure the wrath of god.’